Lot Essay
"They represent his first concerted effort at working in series....He employed two basic approaches: one a continuation of a configuration not unrelated in kind to the preceding cartoon paintings, and the other more neatly abstract in imagery....The paintings were conceived as open-sided, horizontal in configuration, so that there is a pronounced feeling for the atmosphere and spatial openness of an actual landscape. To supplement this sensation and simultaneously to situate the image in the picture plane the artist often cropped the configuration at both top and bottom....Although the artist has shifted to a subject clearly real in origin, he has been able to control it by the information and experience gained from the cartoons. Thus he is able to offer us landscapes that convincingly challenge reality in a manner very much like the cartoons" (D. Waldman, Roy Lichtenstein, 1971, Milan, p. 18).
"Well, partly it was a play on Optical art. But optical materials might be used in commercial art or in display; you use and optical material to make a sky, because the sky has no actual position--it's best represented by optical effects" (J. Coplans, Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1972, p. 88).
"Well, partly it was a play on Optical art. But optical materials might be used in commercial art or in display; you use and optical material to make a sky, because the sky has no actual position--it's best represented by optical effects" (J. Coplans, Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1972, p. 88).